As long as there's a backup of the database, then there's always a way of viewing the content, even if someone has to jury rig something to do it.

Somehow I've been living in a box and hadn't realised Yahoo had deleted all their Groups, so we have actually recently lost 2 historic Oddworld communities from the 90s/very early 00s: Exoddus Club and the Oddworld Group/In Oddworld We Trust.

Sometimes, browsing the Wayback Machine a lot makes me feel like I can just pop back in time and grab some backups real quick, but it turns out I can't.

what are you talking about, i was only gone for–

oh… oh no

MANCO!

I'm not dead. I just became a weeb.

oh not that fucker

Some would say death is better ;) how goes the weebing?

Pretty great. Watching Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song.

I kinda forgot this was here, there's even still life too :Britpog:

I have names.

Stranger's Maid
Skillyaslig
Moosh da Outlaw
Carnix
AlienMagi
OddYouko

It's tempting to flippantly reject any and all nostalgia and love for this forum and its members. But it would be a lie.

There is an undeniable weight that builds in my heart when I come to Oddworld Forums, even now. Like having come through a hurricane of souls, recalling the names of a few people whose fingers I have grazed with my own, then seeing them vanish and disappear in a whirl of events where their disappearance falls unmarked, just another impossible event to see in the roaring tempest until long after it abates.

I don't know if I'll come back here again. Seeing this old forum theme again makes me feel more sentimental than I want to admit, recalling years worth of memory. I'm not sure I want to bring the baggage of so many years onto me all at once like that again. I'm happy today and live a good life. It's not that I have no wish to be here anymore, but that I have no need for it and the torture of recollection is stronger than what good I think I can draw from here.

I'm reachable on the Oddworld Forums Discord.

I vaguely remember Sydney. I was 10 at the time, so my memory is super fuzzy.

I'd suggest adding Kaimana to your list. He was prolific in the 2002-2003 period, did a lot of mod work (I believe, @Nate can confirm?), and was part of the 'teenagers who live on Oddchat' group.

This is both incredibly nostalgic and sweet. OWF and the people here meant so much to me as a child/teenager/young person. Thank you to everyone who keeps this alive in whatever form.

Also can confirm, not dead.

I dunno. I wasn't prolific in 2002-2003 myself :)

You should post on Facebook more often. How else will I know you're still on this earthly plane?

hi guys

ENCH!

MA! It's been a hot fucking minute, hasn't it? What's been going on?

WELL. the forums are long overdue for an update and will disappear if that doesn't happen, BUT we can't update the forums because Alcar and/or Cloverfield has the keys and no one can get them for whatever reason. or something like that. to be honest i'm not sure. at this stage though i don't think it would matter if we could 'save the forums' because we would just be saving a virtual ghost town. no fucker posts anymore and apparantly the sign-up function has been disabled for fucking ages. so.....yeah.

in other words, this site will go offline at some point. MY HEART BREAKS

Yeah, that's upsetting. I'm pretty nostalgic for the days when this place used to be busy, although I can't really complain since I stopped posting here ages ago.

I'm glad the discord exists though, even if it's not quite the same and is missing a bunch of core members (such as yourself - you should definitely come complain about Oddworld with us).

It'll be an end of an era all the same when this place finally disappears.

im just glad i managed to save this thread before the forums go down permanently

(Please delete this post, accidentally posted twice)

Hey guys,

Is OWF really going to end? It makes me really sad to think that it would stop sometime soon. As a teenager I used to logon to here every day to see all the new updates, Paul's editor, level variations, debates about sprout gas, etc.

Why is OWF disappearing? Why doesn't it just stay as the website it currently is? Why would anyone want to take it down?

I apologise for the outburst there.. it's making me a little emotional. I'm glad OANST made it on to the list - he was like the schoolyard bully

P.S. Isn't Paul going to bring out his new editor soon? Isn't that a reason to keep the forum alive?

If you want more OWF in your life, you may want to join our Discord server, which is alive and kicking

No one wants to take it down, but no-one is motivated enough to keep it running. The forums are running on an ancient version of vBulletin, which utilises a very old version of PHP, and at a certain point our servers are going to stop supporting it. And the task to update vBulletin will take a long time and a lot of effort and no-one can be all that much bothered for a place that gets no traffic.

I appreciate the irony that it gets no traffic because of the website problems which in order to be fixed would require traffic to be here.

Thank you Varrok! I have joined now.

Thanks for explaining Nate. Makes sense. I was just 14 when I joined OWF, and it's funny looking back now aged 26 :happy: I'm just glad it's still around now and people still actually post here! Although I thought there might be some more activity due to Soulstorm released recently...

We're working on the assumption that fixing the problems wouldn't fix the traffic. No-one uses forums any more, especially not for series that haven't put out a good game in 16 years.

Though I partially agree, the forums were just as broken a few years ago before Soulstorm was released when there still was a group still excited and willing to talk about it on the forums. I don't expect it would boom in popularity like in 2001, but throwing obstacles at newcomers only made them want to join less.

I will embark on a great plot to destroy big tech and restore OWF to its slightly less dead state

ZIIIIINGGGGG

looks like there are at least 100 people as Gusts recently
https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...04/unknown.png

not sure if it's all bots but some people are finding it

sorry that was me, i had 93 proxies set up

I come back to see this place is still up, but alas, I find a forum saying it's dwindled into nothing, even with Soulstorm's release. Sucks. Yet just another site I used to visit that's now nothing but a piece of nostalgia.

Guess I stay on to browse what all I've missed these passed how many friggin years. Damn..

Interesting, I wonder what caused 4000+ people to all log-in here at the same time as 'recently' as October 2015. Soulstorm had been confirmed to exist by Lorne by then, but that was before it even had a name so it can't have been any significant news.

I can't believe Hobo's still around. But I can't see old and not so tasty.

Most of them would have been search engine spiders. No idea why they all decided to sync up at once, though.

a search engine spider, how does that work?

runestones and voodoo.

ill remember you all in my dreams

Is it just me or did vBulletin just (or at least in the weeks/months since I last logged in) break even further? I can't see the 'Last Logged In' or PMs widget at the top.